That version was a pre-alfa version of kvm support in qemu, is insanely outdated, is heavily patched by redhat. I don't even think USB2 was supported by that version. Please try on a current version of qemu and kernel and reopen if the problem persist there.
** Changed in: qemu Status: New => Invalid -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1458121 Title: USB2 is five times slower than native on qemu-kvm Status in QEMU: Invalid Bug description: Dear Qemu, Spice told me to report this over here. Scientific Linux 6.6 $ uname -r 2.6.32-504.16.2.el6.x86_64 $ cat /etc/redhat-release Scientific Linux release 6.6 (Carbon) $ rpm -qa qemu\* qemu-img-0.12.1.2-2.448.el6_6.3.x86_64 qemu-kvm-0.12.1.2-2.448.el6_6.3.x86_64 I have a bootable USB2 FC21 flash drive. I can boot my machine directly from it or run it as a virtual machine through KVM. Problem: it is about 5 times slower through KVM. (Really, I am not exaggerating) Many thanks, -T To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1458121/+subscriptions